


Light Carries On

by IonFusion



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, F/M, Female Umino Iruka, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Song fic, Summer Sky, You Have Been Warned, all the kids are young, but not Iruka's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25234087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IonFusion/pseuds/IonFusion
Summary: Kakashi finally realizes what Iruka may have been rambling about all those years ago.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sarada & Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, Hyuuga Hinata & Uzumaki Boruto, Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto, Sai & Yamanaka Ino & Yamanaka Inojin, Sai/Yamanaka Ino, Uzumaki Boruto & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48
Collections: Nine Weeks of Summer 2020





	Light Carries On

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the song Saturn by Sleeping At Last. Please give at least one listen before reading as the contents of this fic are heavily inspired by the lyrics :)
> 
> This fic could also be in the same universe as my fic The Light is Burning Low, but you don't need to read it at all.

Kakashi finishes signing the scroll in front of him. It’s nothing majorly important, just a note to Archives granting permission for some shinobi down in Research to access certain scrolls. He lets the ink dry before rolling it up and sticking it in the pile of completed paperwork, then pushes back from the desk and stands. 

Deft movements remove the cloak around his shoulders and tidy up what little he cares to around the Hokage’s Office, and then Hatake Kakashi leaves for the day. 

When he first took this position, there were several shinobi who would try and stop him as he left the tower on this day every week. Now, however, they pass him by with respectful inclines of their heads (and perhaps sadness in their eyes); he has a specific destination in mind, you see, an errand much more important and personal than leading his beloved village.

The walk to the Name Stone has always been a dreary one. Before the War, it was wearying, a weight on his soul that grew with each step closer. Now, when so many more names have been added and the memorial expanded, the walk is more a trudge. He’s weary still, yes, but where once he had overcome the deep, aching pain of loss, it returns to nips at his heels and needle at his composure.

He doesn’t cry. He hasn’t for a long, long time.

There is no one there when he arrives, thankfully (he’s not sure what he would have done). Kakashi bows to the stone in respect to those he is not there to see and steps forward to trace familiar names: Uchiha Obito, Nohara Rin, Namikaze Minato, Uzumaki Kushina. Hatake Sakumo’s name does not reside on the monument, will never rest there, but Kakashi has long-since come to terms with this and thinks of it no longer. (He pretends it’s there, anyway, traces the imagined lettering in the air and thinks his hellos. Old habits die hard.)

But there’s only so much he can do to stall, and now Kakashi paces to the other side of the Name Stone.

_ Umino Ikkaku _ , he reads.  _ Umino Kohari _ . Heroes deserving of their place on the stone.

He had known them, once upon a time. They were immigrants to Konoha from Wave, Kohari with a newborn in her arms and a tense, anxious smile on her lips. Kakashi was almost five, almost a genin, too smart for his own good, and  _ curious _ . He saw them exiting Sandaime’s office as his father and he arrived to deliver a mission report. 

Sakumo had bowed and smiled at Kohari and her bundle. He had promised to bring Kakashi over to play sometime soon. 

Hatake Kakashi had grown up with Umino Iruka. Up until a few years ago, he had  _ still _ been growing up with her. 

(From frenemies to friends to lovers, from each milestone in their lives to the next, they had grown together in every way that mattered - right up until he awkwardly held out a wedding ring and asked her to grow old with him. 

She had said yes -

But would never say ‘I do’.)

Finally he dredges up the strength to rest his eyes on the name that now plagues his every living moment:

Umino Iruka. 

Shaking fingers reach out to hover a hair’s-breadth from the face of the stone, but he is - still - unable to  _ reach _ her, unable to close that final gap and join with her once more. The fingers curl into a fist that he draws back to stuff in its pocket. 

_ It hurts _ , he thinks, and he isn’t sure exactly what he is referring to.

_ Remember the good times _ , Kakashi knows she would say - has  _ heard _ her say about their parents, about Obito and Rin, about Minato and Kushina. 

With eyes slightly scrunched against the waning light, he looks to the summer sky and  _ tries _ . 

There are so many happy things about Iruka to remember: her smile, her eyes, her temper, her blush, her scar, her laugh. Most of all, though, Kakashi likes to remember her heart - her kindness, and her selflessness, and her courage. Her wonder, too, and the way she had of looking at mundane things in a whole new light. 

The first stars are peaking out at the edge of the celestial canopy, bright specks in deepening purple and washes of indigo. Kakashi’s lips lift in a pained smile.

Stars; Iruka had always loved the stars. She liked to stargaze on clear, summer nights. It had been mildly irritating at the time, but she would sleep until the earliest morning hours when the air was just the right temperature and then sit on the roof of their apartment with nothing but a blanket and a cup of tea to keep her company.

After waking up several dozen times in a vague panic, Kakashi had begged her to just wake him up herself so that he wouldn’t be needlessly worried. It took several invitations after that before he finally started joining her, and then it just became a  _ thing _ . 

(At first Iruka had been quiet, just soaking up the starlight like some strange flower. Then, on a particularly warm October night, he had joined her on the roof, and she had started pointing out the constellations.

He hadn’t had the heart to tell her he already knew them all.

But she began to tell the  _ stories _ \- the myths and the legends behind each one, some Kakashi vaguely recognized directly as Hi no Kuni lore and others he realized must have been told to her by  _ her _ parents, traditions and sagas from Nami no Kuni. These he listened to with rapt attention, because by then any part of Iruka was a part of Kakashi, too.)

These outings are how Kakashi learned his girlfriend had a tendency to ponder deeply philosophical questions at two a.m. It wasn’t always a quirk he appreciated, even given the genius he supposedly was, but some of the things she had said just  _ stuck _ even all this time later.

Like, Kakashi would never have guessed that Iruka was into astronomy, but she had begun lecturing him one night about the science of light and electromagnetic radiation. The next night had been normal, but the night after  _ that _ Iruka had told him all about the formation of stars. Pretty soon Kakashi knew all about red-shift and blue-shift and lightyears and parsecs and - whew. He didn’t know how the chunin could walk around with all that in her head and pretend like she was completely normal or  _ sane _ (he maybe kinda sorta loved her more for that fact, actually).

What had really stuck out to him though was something she said after packing all that away in his mind. It had been one of her quiet nights, the ones where she sat staring almost wistfully up at the heavens and Kakashi tried not to fall asleep beside her. After maybe an hour of just sitting there, Iruka, without turning away from the view, had murmured, “Light carries on endlessly, even after death.” 

Thanks to the woman beside him, Kakashi now had the knowledge to understand that sentence, and even though it had been interesting, it wasn’t as profound as he now found it several years later standing in front of the closest thing to a grave she had.

(She had told him, once, that she wanted to be cremated when she died and her ashes scattered in the forest on top of the Hokage Monument. 

It was partly superstition, Iruka would later admit, carried down from her parents and their small clan in Wave, and he had been more than a little surprised that she believed any sort of superstition and even  _ more _ shocked that he hadn’t noticed at  _ all _ . Apparently they believed that the spirits of the deceased could only be at rest if the bodies were cremated. Kakashi had promised to honor her wishes.

Then again, he had never expected her to go  _ first _ .)

Standing there, he thinks he understands what she had  _ really _ been saying - thinks he understands the conversation they had  _ really _ been having over all those summer nights. 

Iruka had loved the sky like she loved her village and the stars like she loved people. Actually, it was the other way around: she had loved people as if they were stars, beings burning with light and ambition and beauty. She had so much desired to help every child she taught to achieve their dreams and become the best versions of themselves, and even her adult friends had commented more than once on her unwavering support and drive for them to always  _ improve _ . More than anything Iruka had fought to  _ save _ people - save their humanity, save them from each other, save them from themselves.

She had saved Kakashi. 

She had saved him, and now, he realizes,  _ he _ is her light - him, and Naruto, and Sakura, and everyone who loved her, all of them carrying some of that light she had used to redeem them.

Iruka had talked about people as if they were the most amazing creatures. Even after someone did something horrible, she had made it a point to ponder their reasoning and mindset and to question what might have driven them to make those choices. She was  _ fascinated _ by it all, sympathized with even the worst scum of humanity because they were  _ all _ human, were stars just like everyone else, and she shed tears for them because they had been allowed to burn out. 

Another memory comes to Kakashi’s mind, one of a conversation he’d had with Iruka not long before her death. He had told her he thought her brave, and she had blushed and stammered. 

“We’re all brave,” Iruka had said. “All of us. We’re all alive, aren’t we? We could choose not to be - kami knows we have enough reasons - but we  _ don’t _ choose it. We choose to face the world and keep fighting. I think - I think we  _ all _ have courage, deep inside us, that we just never really know or think about. And I think… I think that’s part of what makes us human to begin with.”

People burned with light, and she had seen it. It made her special, a one-of-a-kind angel, and it made her even more beautiful. She had spoken as if it were a  _ blessing _ to meet all the people they did, even if their meetings were in battle  _ against _ each other. It was like gravity, she had explained, two stars pulled in towards each other to clash briefly and brightly until one gave way to the burning of the other. Even if both survived, they would forever be different for it. 

Death was another thing Iruka had pondered at length at three in the morning. Kakashi, the shinobi he had been back then, hadn’t understood these ramblings quite as well as the others. Death was death, he had thought, was the end. It happened, and all that was left was a body and maybe a hole where someone had loved them. 

(Love was very closely associated with loss for him, so perhaps his vision of the End could be forgiven of its warp.)

“Not all stars just give out,” Iruka had said, one hand carding through his hair where his head rested in her lap. “Some go supernova and take out everything around them. Some become black holes and  _ swallow _ everything around them. Others shrink and compress and darken until they’re neutron stars or pulsars. But only the big stars can become any of those things. The smaller ones get a little bigger right at the end then shrink down until there’s not enough mass to emit light, and they fade away and are forgotten.”

(This time Kakashi had been awake to think about that, and his eye had idly traced the constellations. His father would have been a black hole, then, taking Kakashi’s childhood and his innocence and his love with him. Rin was a black hole, too, one that still sometimes loomed ominously at the edges of his mind. Minato and Kushina and Obito, however, had all gone supernova. Their deaths had rocked Kakashi to his core and driven him onto a path of self-destruction. 

What sort of star was Kakashi? Would he turn into a black hole? Go supernova?

But he forgot that he was no longer alone, that his system was binary - that Iruka orbited him and he, her. It had taken a long time, but eventually he had managed to drag himself out of that darkness where he lived, because he didn’t want to hurt Iruka like that with his imminent demise. 

He hadn’t dared to think what her death might do to  _ him _ .)

Kakashi blinks and comes back to himself from his memories. The sky is completely dark now, all the stars out and sparkling. He sighs and rubs tiredly at his face before bowing once more to the Name Stone and walking away (he feels like he’s leaving a piece of himself behind). 

_ What sort of star was Iruka? _

It hurts to think about.

It’s been years already, but anything regarding Iruka still pains him - probably will for a long time.

Iruka had burned so brightly, a blazing light for all to follow back home, and she had gone out in her prime. And yet… 

_ Light carries on endlessly, even after death. _

Kakashi arrives at the Hokage’s mansion and soundlessly slips through the door. He neatly sets his sandals to the side and pads on silent feet to the living room where he pauses. Naruto, Hinata, Sakura, Sasuke, Sai, and Ino are all sitting on the floor playing with three small toddlers: one blond and blue-eyed, one raven-haired and sable-eyed, and the last platinum-blond with eyes the soft blue of still waters. Boruto, Sarada, and Inojin. 

There have been other children belonging to other couples of Naruto’s generation in and out of this room over the last two or three years, but now they are home with their respective parents. Naruto must have invited the members of the former Team Seven and their families over tonight without telling Kakashi.

Speaking of Team Seven… 

“Are you going to join them, senpai?”

The Rokudaime Hokage glances at the shinobi who has drifted up beside him and offers an eye-smile - with both eyes! He’s still getting used to that - before looking back into the room.

Iruka must have been a pulsar, he decides, throwing off energy in the direction of Earth even after she had… _ moved on _ . The evidence sits before him in the mass of chubby limbs and laughing couples - resides in  _ him _ , with the life that will never be the same now that she’s gone. The chunin had touched all of their lives with her light, and now they carried it within them.

They carried it, and now it was their turn to share it, because they couldn’t let that light die. 

“In a minute,” he says softly, chest warm with love and grief. (Because love and loss have almost always been the same to him, but now he wouldn’t give it up for the world - not if it means giving up  _ her _ .)

Kakashi wishes every day that Iruka was there in bed beside him to wake him up at two in the morning and talk to him about the stars again. He wishes he had taken the time to record everything with the sharingan, or at least write down everything she’d said so that he might have a record of more of the many reasons he loved her. 

But, as he steps into the room with a smile and a wave and joins his friends - his  _ family _ \- on the floor, as he gazes upon the little sparks just waiting to be guided into something greater, he resolves to keep Iruka’s light burning as long as he can, to try and see the world as she had seen it - to save others even as she had saved him.

He will pass on her Will of Fire with the help of Naruto and the rest of his family.

Umino Iruka’s light will carry on.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so, so sorry for this. After my last fic though I was feeling a serious need to write angst and, well, there's nothing quite like the death of a beloved character to get the angst going. Ugh, I wanted to cry writing this.
> 
> Please tell me what you think - even if it's not so great, I'd like to know :)
> 
> I'd like to dedicate this fic to all of you guys, because you're awesome! ^^ I know I'm not terribly active on the Discord server, and y'all on there probably think I'm a grumpy ol' bear, but I'm just shy and insecure around such amazing people uwu. Everyone on the server and everyone else who's not, you are all amazing. Iruka knows it, I know it, and now you do, too.
> 
> Remember that you're all stars!


End file.
